new to this blog

It is conceivable that one would assume this if a blogmasterblogger blog-author appears to have put their blog out to pasture.. by, say, posting only once every 6 months or so (guilty). Or that said author appears to be letting their interest in writing wane away to an inevitable demise (guilty).

Such a thought process would not be incorrect.

But.

It’s about having stuff to put out there.

Usually, the most fun, interesting things I’ve come up with have been in the company of friends. It has often been a discussion point between my friends and I that if only we could somehow publicize our messages to each other, we would have comedy/information gold.

If only it were that simple.

You need the right people. You need the right medium. You need interesting topics. You need to be able to play off each other.

Suffice to say I do have candidates on all those fronts. But the partner-in-crime got self-selected during one of those daily back-and-forths with Raghu:

Raghu: finished this book – http://www.amazon.com/Remember-India-First-World-Vedica/dp/8174369791Satish: yes i think i heard about this on sidin’s podcast/newsletterRaghu: i don’t veen get those anymoreRaghu: and never heard his podcastRaghu: why don’t we do a podcast?Satish: hahahahahahaSatish: y’knowRaghu: well – you have a bunch of things happening for sureSatish: i started listening to this dads podcast and mentioned to G that i should an indian geek dad podcast with raghuSatish: great minds, manSatish: but yes, every time i think about how to get that off the ground i remember all the other things in the airRaghu: yeahRaghu: well, let’s try anywaysRaghu: desi geek dad squadRaghu: once every two weeks

Personally, of course, I have been following podcasts for a while (no matter what the so-called podcast renaissance would have you believe). Just like my beloved RSS feeds, they remain integral to my online experience. Based on which, it seems apt to reflect on our own experience so far.

This seems a good point as any to touch on some of the more abstruse aspects of our podcast. Such as the subtleties to our logo:

Raghu and I have known each other for a while (15 years, at this point, I think). This conversation epitomizes what happens when we hang out together… really, it’s 15 years of missed recording sessions 🙂 Geekdom. Pop culture. Movies. Books. Technology. Perspectives. Life. The 11 episodes we’ve released so far have spanned the breadth of these, and we have a list of many many more to come.

How can you get updated? Get notified of new episodes? Actually listen to the damn things?

And we’re inviting you to join in. And let us know what you think. And what you might want to hear about. We promise to do our research to talk about anything you might want to hear about.

Enjoy.

Raghu has, of course, been a lot more on point in putting up an introductory post close to when we launched the show. Me, I tried to write it and then decided to simmer on my take for a while. And so, here we are 4 months later, and I’m finally writing about it. Typical. ↩

Here we are. 5-odd years after severeanomaly.org was first launched. To announce the death of severeanomaly.org.

As well as the continuation of staying.cool.

Such is life.

5 years ago, when Ubertechnophile (when he was still known as Cyberjunkie) and I decided that we needed our own web space, multiple factors came into play. We believed we should own space on the net. We believed we should control what we own. We thought we truly could use some corner which we could (mostly) control. We thought we should go to the next level in being online.

But most of all, we got a good deal from UKHost4U.

Most of the above has not changed. We still believe in most of those things. In the meanwhile, the internetz as we knew it back then has undergone a paradigm shift. And in all of this, web space has lost the sheen it used to have. Free alternatives, cheap alternatives, and most importantly.. viable alternatives finally exist.

Most importantly, the “good deal” from UKHost4U is no longer a “good deal”. Minorly, we can no longer justify spending the money we do for not using the features we don’t (or as much sense as that statement can make).

TL,DR: Effective immediately, severeanomaly.org is phased out. But all blogs currently hosted on this domain will continue to live.

Update: Even more instantaneous, published at 1439 hrs, appeared on Reader at 1439 hrs. I was PHSB enabled already (as I’ve been on FeedBurner for more than a year now), I just didn’t know it. Thanks to Louis Gray‘s post as well as a 7 month old Adsense Feeds post which I completely missed. Google Reader, FeedBurner, Buzz teams all rock!

i’m not talking about cups. or bandwagons. or jacks. or pogo-sticks. or any other random association you might make.

the fact that you’re reading this sentence in your reader, should give you a clue.

i’ve read more than a few posts, such as this, and this, this, this, this, this, this [i assume you get the idea now]; all of which play devils advocate on the topic of partial RSS vs full RSS feeds. you have those who prefer to have a summary so they can decide, those who believe some kind of freedom is being affected, talk about the possibility of spamming, and those who talk of advertising advantages. now, i personally don’t mind clicking through on a partial feed (especially given a fx extension that lets me do it in reader direct), and more than a few spammy pings convinced me a few years ago to switch into partial feeds as well. recently, i have even started putting in custom summaries [see how much i love you guys?].

i do mind having my content stolen by spammers [eg: right here].. even if only a few people read it in the first place 🙂 but, i’m going to suck it up, and no, this is not because i read a lot of posts about how people don’t read partial feeds as much. at all.

i have currently enabled full feeds for everything in this blog, if you do a ‘refresh’ in reader for my feed, you should see it take effect. this is not a momentous occasion, though i’m trying my best to make it feel like one 😀

man, do i make a big hoo-ha about the most random of things..

update: “random of things”?! and not one of you said a thing? damn, damn, damn, damn..

upgrading wordpress 2.6 finally killed k2, much to my dismay. i’ve gone back to an older theme, with far fewer fancy notions and most importantly, managed to customize it to my liking. editing code eventually gets to be so much more fun than actually just throwing in some widgets or modules n shit.

i have no idea why i’m posting, i guess i just had to mention the fact that i have successfully changed the theme after far too long.

p.s. being too bored to think up a title is fun. i am thinking i should have different versions of ‘blah’ in my title for a while, and see how challenging that gets.